Thursday, November 20, 2008

A Response

I was wondering what I would blog about today since I didn’t do hardly anything in game last night. Luckily, a comment to one of my other posts filled the need quite nicely.

I started Comment Moderation when people started using my comments to advertise websites. As recently as this week, I’ve had to reject comments that were nothing more than an add for a Power Leveling service.

In the year plus I’ve run the blog there has only been one comment that I haven’t published, and even in that case I did publish it, but then deleted it.

I say all that to preface this post. I have chosen to not publish a comment I received as a comment. Rather, I’m going to reprint the comment in this post so that I may respond. I would have preferred to address this with the writer of the comment privately, however that wasn’t possible. This comment was left by Anonymous. I understand some people don’t want to be bothered with having to register for a site to comment, but you could always sign your post at the end as Fredykin does.

So with the preface out of the way, let’s move into the comment itself.

This is absolutely and patently untrue. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me or even making comments that are critical of me. However, these statements are not truthful. You might want to talk to the leaders of Heroes (Ferth) and Mal Katai (Dora/Brindall/Raistilan)because I’m sure they will tell you these comments are untrue.

I left Heroes still needing many upgrades out of Karazhan. In fact, we had just gotten Prince into single digits on my last run with them. The following week a kill was likely and would have seen our first Tier 4 helm.

My gear progression had not stopped.

With Mal Katai, the very last raid I did with them saw a progression kill on Leotheras and our first Tier 5 gloves. Knowing I was leaving, I passed on them, despite having the most DKP at the time. I also still did not have my T5 shoulders from Void Reaver despite Mal Katai killing him a couple of times.

My gear progression had not stopped.

My last raid with Dominion was our first go at Brutallus, which Dominion would get a kill on the next raid. I didn’t have a single drop out of Sunwell and still needed a couple of drops out of Black Temple.

My gear progression had not stopped.

I'm sure that in each case there were alot of little things that moved you toward the decisions that you made in leaving that you never blogged about.

This is absolutely true. In an attempt to not criticize my raid and guild leaders anymore than I had already done, I didn’t publicly blog about the other ‘little things’ that moved me to change guilds. I can’t tell you how many posts I wrote complaining about those ‘little things’ that upon further reflection I chose not to publish.

I can assure you those ‘little things’ played a far larger role than gear.

However, from this reader's perspective you are pretty much all about getting loot.

Then I have done a poor job of communicating what I’m all about, and for that I apologize.

Perhaps I’ve made too many ‘I got loot’ posts. But I got comments that readers actually enjoyed hearing about a new piece of loot I’d receive so I included them. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

I think anyone who has known me for very long knows I’m a lore fan (I’m also a Lore fan, but that’s not really germane at the moment). Lore is the driving force for me in the endgame, not loot, but they are connected.

Loot is what is needed to turn the page to get to the next chapter of the story, to continue exploring the lore. At first, it was just raiding. In order to continue to pursue the story lines and lore of the Burning Crusade you had to transition from quests to 5 mans to Raids. Then loot was needed to transition from one tier of raids to the next.

Who will you blame when you are the driving force bringing the loot into your guild?

I’m really not sure what this question means. I’ve designed a loot system for my prospective guild, which I’ll follow if I decide to go that route.

AoS is a well established server at this point. Which means that if you recruit from established guilds, the people coming into your guild are looking to step up from where they are... that means progression kills.

It is not my plan to recruit out of established guilds. I’ll be looking for ‘free agents’. I’m sure if my guild provides what people are looking for, people from established guilds will contact me.

You want progression kills, you need a raid leader who is online an hour before raid start time and then online a half hour after raid time to deal with all the BS that came up during the raid. How many nights a week can you commit to? Three? that's not very much to the really hardcore raiders... but its way too much for the casual raiders.

I believe there are many quality players who are looking for just that: a progressive guild with a limited time commitment.

I really don't know what might be best for you.

I don’t either. I wish I did, it would make making a decision so much easier.

Judging by the amount of critical thoughts you have for your past guilds, you would be better off leading your own guild. And by the same token, depending on your expectations of what your guild will be about... all your critical thoughts may very well doom you to failure.

I’ve never been truly happy with the way any of my former guilds were run, and I’ve made it known on my blog. There is a level of commitment that I need to make to the 14 to 20 brave souls who would choose to ‘follow old Obi-Wan on some damn idealistic crusade’.

I can’t go forward until I’m confident in my own mind that I will be willing to see this thing all the way through, to build and rebuild the guild more than once if necessary. This is why I’ve taken the better part of a week to try to come to a decision on this move.

I may decide I'm not willing to make the commitment of time, energy and emotion necessary to run a guild, but I may very well decide that I am.

Honors, I read your blog everyday... Whoever left that comment is a pure and utter idiot. The fact that someone would read your blog and then leave nasty comments like that is unbelievable, seeing as they obviously read them quite often! They're practically looking to pick a fight, if they don't like you or the way you play your character then why come here at all?! Jeez, you pay your $15 a month, and you play this for fun, and owe no one an explanation for the way things are run. Unbelievable. >_<

I don´t believe it´s just for picking up a fight like Adrexis said. Normally these comments are from people you know in a direct way. Perhaps somebody from your old guild who have been hurt by the loss of your character or your manner to think about the game.I also wouldn´t worry about this guy when he hasn´t the balls to show his name.

Furthermore, it shows you how hard leading a guild can be. Envy and greed can always try to backstab you.

Additionally, in my opinion there are several skilled players who like to raid only two or three days a week. You would fill a spot between hardcore raiders and casuals being able to get the best from both worlds. And if you ar not careful the worst.

Honors, you and just about everyone that reads this knows that loot and progression run hand in hand. There's no way to talk about progression without gear and vice versa. Your posts about loot have more to do with the theorycrafting of tankadin gear. I think just about every post you made about loot involved a healthy discussion of what it upgraded and why it was such an improvement.

As far as getting off the fence, you have some time still to make that decision. There's no harm in sitting on the fence for another couple of weeks.

If I had to hazard a guess. It sounds like a disgruntled guild member of one of the guilds you left.

Nothing much you can do about it.

I will say this though, it didn't sit right with me when you told Dominion you had stopped raiding with them on future and current raid content. Not doing level 80 raids with them is fine, but pre-xpac raiding? As a main tank you received loot ahead of other people (because of your role) and then you left them in the lurch, if only for a couple of days.

The question them becomes if the xpac hadn't come out for another month instead of a day or two, would you still done the same thing? If you become a GM, how would feel if someone did that to you and your guild?

While the timing made it inconsequential, the principal of it didn't sit quite right with me.

As a guild leader, I will say, having someone leave hurts. Not just because they are a friend (assuming they are a friend), but because it also hurts your guild's progression and morale. I also think a guild leader tends to sometimes take it personal when someone leaves. Having a tank leave is even worse, since they are the most gear dependent class in the raid, it can set the entire guild's pace back tremendously. Given all this, I can understand a former guildmate of honors acting the way that they did, I've had a lot of the same thoughts, and frustrations myself.

Take it for what it is, it's a former guildmate that's pissed off (and somewhat justifiably so, while his accusations may be false, it does REALLY suck when a key member leaves).

That said, I think it's not honors fault, I think it's a communication problem between the guild, and it's members. If somebody leaves a guild because it's just not serious enough, pushing hard enough, or whatever, then the guild just didn't make it's mission clear enough, but at the same time, the guilt also falls partially on the player, for not asking the right questions.

The morale is, players and guild's should do the best they possibly can to ensure that the guild is a proper fit. The only way to replace a person that leaves, is to poach from another guild, or to start from scratch and gear up somebody new. Neither of those options is desirable, hence the frustration.

I didn't feel like I left Dominion in a lurch because they had plenty of capable and geared tanks. They were able to kill anything on Wednesday (my night off) that we killed any other night.

We stopped Main Tank gearing well before I left and any loot I got before others was used to make sure they got what they needed as well. Case in point, anyone who wanted T6 gloves got them even though I did receive the first Paladin set.

I can't honestly say what would have happened if the Expac would have been further away.

Once we killed Illidan, I felt like we had accomplished what we set out to do. Thought I did continue to raid and we killed Illidan at least 3 times.

In that instance I no longer see anything wrong with the way you left.

Although with regards to the original commenter that lead to your post. I think it was just them being upset you left in general. Losing a dependable skilled tank can hurt and people tend to lash out even when leaving under amicable circumstances.